


Fall Away

by ughineedcoffee



Series: The Runt of the Litter [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Awesome Jody Mills, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Winchester Sister, Witch - Freeform, little sister - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28918032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughineedcoffee/pseuds/ughineedcoffee
Summary: "For the longest time, the world existed only as blurs of light and dark accompanied by bursts of low sounds like voices humming. Anna fell through them all in a blissful state of limbo." Doomed by a witch's curse, Anna fights to stay in the land of the living long enough for her family to save her. Featuring Jody!
Series: The Runt of the Litter [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112966
Kudos: 14





	Fall Away

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos! It means a lot!  
> This story was inspired in part by the Twenty One Pilots song "Fall Away," and if you haven't heard it then I highly suggest you listen to it (it's not important to understand the story but it's such a good song).  
> Anna is fifteen.

For the longest time, the world existed only as blurs of light and dark accompanied by bursts of low sounds like voices humming. Anna fell through them all in a blissful state of limbo.

Then she woke up. It took ages to force her heavy eyelids open, but once she succeeded, Anna was greeted by a hazy but familiar image. Green eyes, a voice rumbling low and comforting, and scruff beneath her fingers when she reached up foggily to touch what she now recognized as her brother's face.

"Hey, kid. You awake now?"

It was her first time hearing distinct syllables rather than brief and obscure eruptions of sound in a while, so it took her a minute to understand the question. Then, when she tried to answer, her mouth was cotton dry and she only managed to cough.

"Here," came another voice she recognized but couldn't put a name to. "Water."

A plastic water bottle crinkled and then her head was supported and something cold pressed to her lips. She turned away at first, but she heard the word 'water' repeated a couple times and that sounded excellent at the moment, so she turned back to the cold and drank greedily until the bottle was pulled away. Her head fell back against something cushiony but not soft to the touch. She ignored the questioning voice that continued to rumble calmly above her in favor of considering what was beneath her and where she was. Under her head was a jacket, she deduced, and the rest of the details flooded back as she looked over a shoulder to see the off-white ceiling of the car she'd lived in her entire life.

"Wh'appen?" She was exhausted, and her words weren't coming out the way she wanted, but Anna was pretty sure that Dean or Sam would get the gist of what she was asking.  
  


"Witch. We're gonna take the bitch down, Runt. Cross my heart. But we didn't want to leave you alone, so-"

"Where?" She tried to lift her head to see out the window and see where they were, but she was unsuccessful. She could recall only a few times in her life that she'd been hurt enough that she couldn't even lift her head, and that certainly did not paint a pretty picture for how she was doing at the moment. "M'I-?" She couldn't even finish the question as her eyes slipped shut.

"Hey. Hey."

Something irritating kept smacking her in the face. It was relatively gentle, but still annoying and it stung on her overly sensitive skin.

"What?" she snapped and tried to bat the offending touch away. But she couldn't even lift her arm. The startled concern that realization brought on was enough to make her open her eyes. "De-" Then she coughed again and didn't stop until she was lying sideways on the seat, barely awake but definitely not unconscious.

"Sam, get the door," she heard, but it was barely more than a buzz drifting down from above her. "Alright, here we go. Come on, Anna, help me out."

She was all floppy limbs and her head bobbled to the side as he tried to pull her out of the car, but Anna couldn't do a damn thing to help. She just felt so weak, weaker than a newborn kitten. It was terrifying, really, because they didn't live in a world where being weak was okay. Weakness was vulnerability and it was something always being exploited the very second it appeared.

"Weak," she breathed, and couldn't remember afterwards whether she'd actually spoken or not.

"I know," Sam said and then he put an arm under her knees and one under her shoulders and picked her up like she weighed nothing at all. But Anna knew better. She was basically a deadweight right now. Sam was just built like a damn linebacker. "I've gotcha," he promised softly as Dean grabbed a couple things out of the trunk and slammed that and the back door shut.

All Anna could hear was the way the hinges were creaking and the doors latching. Then there was movement that left her dizzy even though she hadn't lifted a finger. Things went black for a period, and when she was able to force her eyes open again, it was Sam's face that hovered over her.

No longer confined in the Impala, she was surprised to recognize the light fixture from Jody's living room as she scanned the area over Sam's shoulder. It was tiring just to move her eyes, and it seemed to sap more strength from her as her eyes slid shut again almost immediately. Her mouth wasn't so dry as before, but she still felt thirsty and her throat was sore, a mild irritant all things considered, but irritating nonetheless.

"When... Jod-?"

"You're not making sense," Sam told her apologetically and gently pushed a handful of curls away from her face. "Wake up for a minute, Anna," he requested. There was no mistaking the worry in his voice. Dean was better at putting on disguises. His fear became anger, his concern confidence. Sam could fake a smile, but his eyes gave the rest away, and the undercurrents of his voice were equally revealing.

"Jody's... why?" Forcing clearer syllables out of her mouth was almost painful in the effort it required, and Anna clenched her eyes shut as she struggled to even catch her breath.

"You're gonna stay with her for a little while," Sam said cautiously. Anna opened her eyes just enough to see a blurry image of her brother as he looked at something on the other side of the soft surface she was on. It had to be a couch. She was in Jody's living room after all. "She's progressing faster than the others," Sam spoke so quietly that Anna was only sure she hadn't imagined those words when Dean replied on her left.

"She's younger," Dean said simply. But it wasn't really simple. There was something like fearful rage lining his voice. "We gotta move. Jody'll watch out for her."

"I hate this."

"Me too, but this is how we help her."

Anna didn't have the energy to join or protest Dean's miniature and undermotivated pep-talk, but she internally screamed. It sounded like they were leaving, abandoning her with Jody to go do... something important. Something to help her? But if things were anywhere near as bad as they sounded or _felt_ then the last thing Anna wanted was for them to leave her.

"Listen, Rugrat," Dean implored, his voice just close enough that Anna knew she had missed at least a small portion of time. Nobody could move that fast. "Can you open your eyes?"

She tried, for her big brother, and it worked out. She lifted heavy eyelids and waited for her eyes to focus on the face in front of her. Dean was crouched by her and Anna could feel some childish instinct urging her to reach out and hug him. The delicately encouraging smile on his face had her wondering if the instinct was for an effort to comfort herself or Dean.

"I'm sure you're confused as hell right about now, huh?" Anna couldn't manage more than a grunt in answer, and Dean snorted a little laugh. "Listen, all you need to know is that you're with Jody."

Jody had appeared over Dean's shoulder now, a concerned and serious frown on her face, and she was dressed in her Sheriff's uniform like she'd just come from work for this. What time was it anyway?

"And we're gonna fix this," Dean continued with determination. He patted her shoulder twice. "In the meantime, you just keep fightin'. You'll be alright. You'll be fine."

Except he didn't seem to believe it as much as Anna did just hearing the words come out of his mouth, so she smiled a little to convince him. When the smile felt lazy and pathetic on her face, she put every bit of energy she had left into lifting her right hand towards her brother. "Pinky promise?" she asked, and twitched her nose in a playful smirk when the question successfully pulled a laugh out of Dean. A pinky hooked hers and her eyes closed again.

She felt utterly drained. But a quick kiss ghosted over her forehead, and Anna was reminded that this feeling was entirely temporary. In fact, the next time she woke, maybe she would be able to move. A cynical little smile twitched over her face as Jody's warm hand slipped into hers. How many teenagers had thought that sentence before in their lives?

"You can sleep now, kiddo," Jody assured.

The permission was all Anna needed. She felt herself slip, stumbling backwards toward the edge of something ominously inviting. She didn't want to fall, but she did. She passed out, and it felt like dull mercy.

()()()

The next time she woke, it was to immense pain that shot up and down her arms and legs. In fact, one of the first things she became aware of was her own voice, already screaming itself to hoarseness. She was still too weak for controlled movement, but she thrashed against the pain that overwhelmed her. Once her voice was demolished by her own screams, Anna recognized another voice, struggling for calm but sounding closer to total panic.

Jody.

"Alright. Alright. I don't know. She just started freaking out."

Anna choked on an attempt to speak, cleared her raw throat, and tried again. She managed to rasp something out even as she twitched. But she could barely do more than shift the slightest bit, an inadequate shove back against the pain migrating further up her arms and legs. "Hurts. Hurts everywhere. Jody, help."

Jody's expression twisted in sympathy and she gently smoothed Anna's hair back off her face. "She said it hurts," Jody repeated, and Anna squinted at the bleary image of her friend until she realized Jody was holding onto a phone. "Well, it's obviously _not_ that simple," Jody argued into the receiver.

Anna gasped as a burning sensation struck her abdomen, and then her spine, making her arch up off the couch, the largest movement she'd made since before she started falling. Anna clawed at her stomach with one hand and a couch cushion with the other.

"Hang on, hang on. What's wrong, Sweetie? What's happening?" Jody inquired intently. She grabbed onto Anna's hand and immediately Anna applied a crushing grip, seeking comfort because relief seemed impossible. "She won't-" she started into the phone again, then stopped. She pushed it toward Anna and ordered firmly, "Talk to your brother."

Anna couldn't do more than keep herself breathing, though, as the searing beast swallowed her body. She missed the falling, and she wanted to creep backwards toward the ledge. When she fell, it was bliss, painless liberty from all these well-meaning voices and the problems they were wont to fix.

" _Anna, talk to me. What's happening?_ "

"G- It hurts!" her voice was almost gone, sounding so rough one might think she was a chainsmoker.

" _What hurts? How?_ "

"Burns," she gasped and writhed, squeezing Jody's hand tighter, tighter, tighter. But she grew weaker, weaker, weaker, and her hand fell limply open again.

" _Where?_ " Sam demanded.

"'V'rywhere."

The pain had strengthened her in its motivating burn, but as the cliff's edge beckoned, that strength waned. Her eyes slid shut, and Anna felt herself stumbling toward that freefall. She didn't want to fall, but falling was easiest, and with her brothers on the case, she knew that up here would get along fine without her, and so she fell.

()()()

There was something cool resting on her forehead when she woke the third time. The unobtrusive and comforting weight of the unknown but soft object helped guide her into waking. Her body had gone weak again, like the first time she woke thought to her that had become a vague, nearly lost memory. There was a much less intense version of the searing pain from earlier nagging at her stomach and chest. She was warm all over this time, though, like sunbathing on a beach in July. The heat surrounded her, howling its power and swallowing away the sweet coolness of that something on her forehead. That little, comfortingly cool weight was lifted away.

Anna stirred, lifting a weak hand to bring back the missed remedy. Instead of finding anything cool, though, her fingers brushed skin, and Anna clenched her eyes more tightly shut before forcing them open. So focused had she been on the sensation that she hadn't even realized that there was a voice lilting above her, sometimes speaking her name and other times raising a little and addressing somebody else. She stared at the blurred form her eyes were beginning to make out. The skin of her face was unbearably hot and sweaty, and her eyes burned and filled with water, making it difficult to see much of anything as more than a blob. But she did manage to recognize what it was she was looking at after just a short time.

"Jody?" she breathed in question. "Jody, 'm hot."

"I know. I know, you're sweating bullets. I'm trying to get your temperature down. You just stay awake and I'll get you some water. Think you can drink it?"

Anna had spaced out through most of Jody's talking, but she realized that she'd been asked a question, and she nodded clumsily. She had no clue what she'd agreed to, though.

"Good, you stay awake," Jody ordered again and stood up.

But as she left she was still talking, and Anna realized she must be on the phone. Then she realized who with and felt a pang of need in her stomach. She wanted her family here with her. She was practically on fire, her insides hurt worse with every second she spent awake, and she could feel her body growing heavier, limbs melting into the cushions of Jody's couch so that Anna was sure she would never be able to lift them again.

She blinked twice and felt her eyes slide shut again. Her body was practically a furnace, heat pouring out of her every pore and soaking her with sweat. The heat that was trapped behind her eyelids made her eyes water worse, and she hoped Jody wouldn't think she was crying.

With what little energy she had, Anna flung an arm sideways and flinched when her wrist hit something unforgivingly hard. The coffee table? But it felt good to have some part of her not stuck against the hot, sweat-damp cushions of the couch. She tried to roll over but couldn't come up with the strength. She tried to lift her head, but her muscles just wouldn't cooperate. It all made her angry enough to scream or kick in frustration, but she couldn't even do that. She felt three years old, ready to throw a tantrum because she couldn't seem to express her feelings any other way. But unlike a toddler, Anna couldn't even throw a tantrum. Her own autonomy so compromised, she thought how blessed it would be just to sit up, and then she could think of nothing else.

"Here we go," Jody was back, and this time she wasn't talking on the phone. "Got you some water, Sweetheart." She eased a hand under Anna's head and, with ease, did exactly what Anna hadn't been able to do herself despite herculean effort and lifted her head. Anna didn't have time to dwell on that, though. She drank eagerly when cool water touched her lips, and she didn't stop until the glass was pulled away.

"Thanks," she panted a second later, feeling some of the cold inside of her. It didn't put out the fiery pain in her stomach and chest, but it did ease the flames that had been swallowing her. "They... back?" she asked. She'd been hoping to ask a longer, more coherent version of that question, but she hoped Jody would understand, and she did.

"They were halfway back when... Well, let's just say they know how to stop whatever this is, but they had to head back to Madison."

Anna struggled to hang onto each of the words, but they made little sense to her foggy, overheated mind. She caught the last thing Jody had said, though and could only associate it with a memory, no other meaning. "S'rry, Sam. Mad'son. Good person. He 'ad to."

"What? Madison, South Dakota. The town where you were hunting with the boys." Jody leaned over her and brushed sweaty hair away from her face. The cool cloth that had pulled Anna out of peaceful sleep made its return. "Are you talking about a person? What did Sam have to do?"

"Saved 'er. S-saved-" The world stopped turning in brilliant kaleidoscopic patterns and went a blurry sort of still. But Anan resisted the call of that edge. She'd only been on solid ground for a few minutes. She wasn't ready to fall. "Don' wanna fall. Not yet," she mumbled, and it could have been the fever. Jody probably thought it was.

This time, Anna didn't feel herself stumble. The world just went dark, and gravity took over.

()()()

She floated, but precariously. The air upholding her was made from a tricky combination of magic, fire, and fear. Nevertheless, Anna took solace in her position, because she was free from those ingredients in this world. She could float among them and remain unaware of the threat they posed. Even better, she'd stopped free-falling.

But images danced, spinning around her until she could no longer ignore them. Faces. A girl, maybe twenty, with red hair and a nose ring, her eyes a brilliant shade of blue. A boy, about the same age, with hair that was nearly jet black and gray-ish eyes that pierced whatever they saw. Names drifted in, somehow connected to the images though there was nothing coherent about this world. _Peyton Myres_. _Kieran Smith_.

The sick. Then the dead.

These were the victims in Madison, South Dakota. These were the kids the Winchesters had hurried to save. But their mysterious and sudden illnesses had turned fatal. They'd assumed witch. They'd started searching for suspects. Then there was this place, this magical, dark, detached place. Interspersed with memories of here, there were bursts of time Anna could recall where she'd been scalded and drained.

A sense of panic encompassed the deceptive paradise. People came here to die. They left the world of pain and weakness and found a brief respite from the magical suffering here. But here was where the magic killed them. Even in this land of beautiful unconsciousness, Anna could feel herself beginning to fall with the realization that it was false. And the falling was not consolatory. The falling was sudden, as if she'd been wrenched from the top of a ferris wheel and thrown sideways. But she never hit the ground.

The darkness righted itself and was empty. But Anna kept falling away, afraid and disheartened and hopeful. She knew there was a place where she was not alone, but she couldn't find her way to it.

Until it found her.

There was something implicitly consolatory about the environment that greeted Anna when she woke for round four. It wasn't so much that she felt better. No, she was still cooking in her own skin, still too weak to lift a finger without massive effort, and there was an enduring hot pain in her chest that had increased and made it hard to breathe. But even before she reached full consciousness, Anna recognized the hand that now held onto hers and the low drone of a voice closeby, and she was instantly comforted.

"Dean."

"There she is. Been waitin' on your company, kid."

There were a million things Anna wanted to say, even more questions she wanted answers to. But she knew, with Dean and Sam here, that finding answers wasn't her concern, that everything was taken care of. So instead, she just relaxed marginally and breathed one word, "Hurts."

"We're gonna fix that, okay? I promise. Sammy's geek brain actually does come in handy sometimes. Have a cure whipped up in no time. You'll be good as new."

A wave of relief crashed over Anna at the knowledge that she would soon be back to normal, but she didn't have the energy or control to express that verbally or physically. She couldn't even squeeze her brother's hand, though she tried. So she just breathed and fought unsuccessfully to open her eyes.

"Stay with me, Rugrat. He's almost done. But you gotta stay awake."

It was easier said than done when the darkness beckoned her. But Anna could hear just the smallest hint of frantic fear in Dean's voice, and it was enough to make up her mind. She would _not_ fall asleep until he'd given her permission.

"Hey, give me a sign here. Tell me you're still awake."

It took everything she had left in her to force out the word, but she managed to whisper, "Here."

"Atta girl. Just keep it that way. How we comin' on that crap?" The question was practically shouted over her head, and Anna clung to it anyway. She wanted an answer as badly as Dean did, but whatever muffled words made it back to them, she wasn't able to comprehend their meaning. "Well, hurry up!"

"I fell," Anna breathed, and then she was scared, because the darkness was still _right there_ , waiting for her. There was nothing more terrifying than seeing the world that threatened to steal her from this safe one. "Don' wanna fall," she said. Or she thought she'd said it. It was barely more than an exhale.

"You're not falling, kid," Dean soothed and brushed her hair back with one hand. Apparently he'd heard her. "You're right here with me. I've got you."

Feet like thunder invaded the unpeaceful quiet of the room, and Anna probably would have flinched if her body weren't too weak.

"What're we doin'?" Dean asked, all business and efficiency. "You need blood?"

"No, we have the pendant. That'll be enough. But we do need to make a circle with the Begonia. Jody?"

"I got it," Jody's voice answered quickly. There was a little more shuffling, and Anna tried to open her eyes to see what was going on, not that she could be of any help if she wanted to. "Done," Jody announced, sounding like she was standing just a few feet away.

"Perfect. Get her over here, Dean."

Dean didn't speak, but he moved. His hand disappeared from Anna's, and she heard him step behind her. Then he looped both hands under her arms and around her chest to lift her up off the couch. Somebody else, presumably Jody, grabbed her feet, and then they were moving. It was dizzying and sharp to have the solidity beneath her pulled away so suddenly, even as her head lolled against Dean's chest and she knew without a doubt there wasn't a safer place to be.

"She's gonna drop the second I let go of her," Dean warned.

Anna felt soaked in sweat, the burning pain seemed to surround her heart, and she didn't want him to let go of her at all, not while she was too weak to hold herself up. He was her only ally in a fight against a bottomless pit of empty darkness, the darkness that had taken the ones they couldn't save. There were names somewhere, but she couldn't reach them. She could barely remember her own, could barely remember who it was behind her or who it was answering him.

She was tipped onto her side as gently as possible, but one of her hands hit the floor with a flop. Her knees were bent and her head tucked so her chin was against her chest. Dimly, Anna thought they were trying to fit her inside the circle in such a way that she wouldn't need to work to hold herself in place. The sounds of the world buzzed on, the darkness screamed at her to come back, but Anna didn't want to fall, so she clung to the buzz even when the comforting weight of her brother's hand left her shoulder. The abyss would close in seconds, and if she could stay on land for that long, she could live in safety forever.

Ice struck her heart, and the world behind her eyelids went a vibrant shade of blue. But she could move and breathe and feel again. There was more than pain and heat and weakness. She breathed in deep and rolled onto her back to cough against the block of ice in her chest. It receded, though, before long. She was left staring up at the cream-colored ceiling of Jody Mills' living room. She felt dazed, but still somehow clear-minded.

"Anna?"

It was good, because it was Sam, and it felt like ages since Anna had been able to so distinctly hear his voice.

"Did it work?" Dean demanded.

That was good too, because it was Dean, sounding just as cautiously hopeful and protectively harsh as ever.

All of it was good. The way they helped her off the floor and guided her back to the couch to sit. The way Sam sat beside her and gave her a glass of water that cooled and soothed her raw throat. The way her chest no longer ached and her skin no longer burned with fever. The way she could _move_ and breathe and speak again.

After she'd drained the cup of water, Anna let Jody take it from her, and then she let herself collapse sideways against Sam and hugged him tight. "Thank you," she said expressively, though she knew none of them expected it from her. They were family, and family helped family no matter what.

It was all good. Family was good. But it was gloriously relieving to know that she was no longer in danger of falling.

When Sam just hugged her back, tightly enough that Anna wondered if they'd felt her fall away, she took the time and just breathed. There would be no falling away from this embrace. That sacred limbo in the dark had felt blissful in its falsehood. But this was true stability, true safety, and nothing could beat that.

"So, you're good?" Dean asked, still wringing his hands on Sam's other side.

Anna looked up at him with a winning smile. "Got both feet on the ground," she told him. "I'm better than good."

_la fin_


End file.
